


palliative

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Could Have Beens, Extra Treat, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:17:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8597647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: It didn’t really matter what he wanted in the moment. He wasn’t a man who lived in terms of moments. He prepared for them; he planned around them. He did his job. He survived. It made him a better bounty hunter than most, far less reckless, far less likely to get himself into trouble. Clean getaways and uncomplicated missions. That was his style.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexiel-neesan (alyyks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/gifts).



Jango awoke, head aching and stomach rebelling, to a woman’s face peering down at him, concern in her eyes and a cloth in her hand. A cool cloth—as cool as anything got on Tatooine might have been more accurate, considering it was more tepid than _cool_ —that she dabbed at his forehead. “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice soothing and pleasantly accented despite the shred of pain it sent lancing through his skull.

“Sure,” he said, gruff, unrelenting. He struggled to push himself upright, but his vision swam and closing his eyes, even breathing through his nose and releasing it in a huff through his mouth, couldn’t alleviate it. Still, he didn’t let himself fall back onto the cot he’d somehow found himself on. He certainly wasn’t on it the last time he was conscious, that much he knew for sure. No matter how much his arm shook with the effort to stay horizontal, he _wouldn’t let himself fall_. “What happened?”

The woman gestured with the cloth, red staining the corner of it, and pointed at her temple. “A troublemaker got in a lucky shot on you, I’m afraid. Grazed the side of your head.”

“Not so lucky if I’m alive,” he said, gravel-voiced, his throat irritated. A vague recollection of a face bobbed to the surface of his thoughts. _Because that guy’s a dead man now_.

She ducked her head and smiled, perhaps misunderstanding his statement of intent for a self-deprecating joke. For a resident of this place, she seemed remarkably soft. Not… naïve exactly, but far kinder than most people here were. Blast, but he hated Tatooine. Hated taking jobs here. Hated coming here. Hated having to stay, the twin suns too hot, the sand too biting, the food and people and criminal underbelly too miserable to be worth it most of the time.

No one who knew better liked working with or for Jabba the Hutt. Him included most days.

“Let me get you some water,” she said, her knees creaking as she pushed herself smoothly to her feet. He watched her go, her rough-spun skirts swirling around her legs, brushing patterns into the sand that had gotten into her home. A frown threatened to form at the corner of his mouth until he remembered that sand got everywhere on Tatooine. You’d have to have a cleaning droid running the whole of the day and night to keep the sand out entirely.

And, looking around, his vision stabilizing, it didn’t appear she had the resources to devote a cleaning droid to a perpetual hell of sand cleanup duty. She didn’t seem to have the resources for much of anything. The wall of her home were sturdy, baked clay—recent construction, as there were no cracks that he could see—brown and drab, but nothing decorated them and few pieces of furniture dotted the floor.

Such was the way of things on Tatooine. For a man more used to collecting bounties in the Mid Rim and the Core, it should’ve been a shock, this casual lack. But he’d been around long enough to know that things could be so much worse.

She returned, a small cup carved of some local wood in her hand, a few leaves of—something in the other. Still green and fresh, a shock of color in the midst of so much desolate sameness, it stood out. The woman must misunderstand him again, because she shrugged and looked away. “You chew it. For the pain,” she explained. “It’s not much, but…”

 _It’s all she has_. She didn’t have to explain and she shouldn’t have offered it to him. Something fierce, angry and railing, clawed at the inside of his chest. There should not have been this much simple goodness in the galaxy. Not here. And not for him to accidentally stumble across. “I’ll be okay,” he said, strained, stiff, not a little uncomfortable. “Thank you for offering it to me.”

Kneeling, pushing the cup into his hand, she shook her head and gestured for him to take a sip. After doing as she asked, she took the cup back.

He formed a fist with his hand, a fist she immediately pulled apart with strong, calloused fingers, just enough to press the leaves into his palm. “Take it. More will grow.”

He bit back a credulous laugh. “Lady, this is Tatooine.” _Nothing_ grows _here_.

Smiling again, she laughed, too, the sound of it far too pretty for a place like this. “I’m serious,” she said, somehow knowing just what he meant. It was uncanny. She was so young—at least as young as he was—but her eyes held so much wisdom in them already, so much experience of the harshest world Jango had ever had the displeasure to set foot on. And she had remained—kind.

Jango opened his palm, looked down at those leaves, now a little worse for wear, their edges a bit ragged and curled, the color drooping already. Against that kind of fortitude, he knew he didn’t stand a chance. “Thank you,” he said, with more feeling than he knew what to do with. Tucking them between his teeth, he chewed. The medicinal flavor of the plant burst unpleasantly over his tongue, but the ache in his head dulled and receded immediately, the throb of his pulse no longer paining him behind his eyes. “Thank you.”

Pleased, eyes shining, she nodded. “See? You’re welcome.”

He pushed himself all the way up, crossing his legs a little awkwardly. Sitting across from her, really _looking_ at her, he wished… he wished life was a different thing all together, a better thing. “What’s your name?”

“Shmi,” she replied.

“Shmi,” he repeated, but it didn’t sound quite as lovely coming out of his mouth as it had from hers. For a moment, one wild, impossible moment, he wanted to—to what? To take her in his arms. To share a pleasant evening with her. To—

It didn’t really matter what he wanted in the moment. He wasn’t a man who _lived_ in terms of moments. He prepared for them; he planned around them. He did his job. He survived. It made him a better bounty hunter than most, far less reckless, far less likely to get himself into trouble. Clean getaways and uncomplicated missions. That was his style.

He didn’t take lovers in the middle of a contract.

So: he didn’t. He neither took her in his arms, nor shared a pleasant evening with her. She shared her home for the night. She shared a meal with him. And in the morning, they parted ways, neither fully changed by the experience, but maybe not quite the same either. At least on Jango’s part.

She made him want to reach for something more than the next stint and the next and the next.

For that, he couldn’t let himself regret the encounter even if he might have wanted more of it… if she would have had him, that was to say.

He couldn’t do much for her either, but if he left behind a credit chit with the upfront fees that had brought him to Tatooine to begin with, well, he didn’t have to mention it when he said goodbye to her.

 _Shmi_.

He would remember that name and he would remember her and he hoped, just maybe, he could show another person in the whole damned galaxy the kind of selflessness she had shown him.


End file.
